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Online Marketing News for October 9-12, 2011

Apple’s iOS5 Is On Its Way!

People are getting geared up for Apple’s iOS5, expected to launch later today! In anticipation of iOS5, Apple released iTunes 10.5 and its new iCloud service earlier this week in case you couldn’t possibly wait another second to download some Apple updates.

Facebook Gets Friend.ly

Facebook recently acquired the social Q&A company Friend.ly, not to be confused with Friendly’s, my New England childhood eatery that is sadly going out of business.

Cone head sundaes and waffle fries aside, Friend.ly describes their app as a way to meet new people and foster friendships by answering questions. The app offers you a list of questions which you can choose to answer, or simply compliment other people’s answers by letting them know that you find their answer oh-so-witty or super cool.

You think someone’s answer is cool, maybe they think you are cool too, and then suddenly you’re BFFLs.

Groupon Counter Won’t be Telling the Whole Truth

Groupon made a statement Monday in which they announced that Groupon’s deal counter will no longer be displaying the exact number of Groupons customers have bought for each deal, opting instead for a vague estimate.

“Instead of showing the exact number of Groupons purchased, the counter is now reduced by a random percentage – sometimes 0.5%, sometimes 19.5%, or anything in between.”

Err…alright, why are they doing this? Groupon has an answer, but it doesn’t seem to justify such a strange decision.

“… some clever people are using the counter to make (consistently incorrect) estimates of our total company sales, which we don’t like for the same reason you probably wouldn’t like if people tried to guess your weight all day.”

As the folks at Marketing Pilgrim note, do companies really have nothing better to do than spend days constantly pulling numbers from Groupon’s deal counter to guess at sales? The whole thing sounds a bit fishy to me.

The Sony Hacks Continue

Poor Sony just can’t get a break—yesterday they reported another massive round of hack attempts on 93,000 PSN accounts. The hack attempts occurred between October 7-10 throughout the US and Europe, but Sony promises that users’ credit card info is safe this time (whereas with previous hacks, this information wasn’t so well protected.)

This might explain why I was kicked off my account last night while watching Breaking Bad. As an owner of a PS3 myself, I’m starting to wonder if Xbox was the way to go after all…

The one thing Sony has done right recently is the creation of a fantastic PS3 ad that’s gone viral.

Netflix Quits Qwikster

It seems that recently people have really been making an effort to be heard. People have been taking a stand and voicing their complaints in an effort to change the way business is conducted, as evidenced by the recent Occupy Wall Street movement and the Bank of America protests.

While sometimes such cries of outrage go unheard, Netflix actually decided to listen this week.

Subscribers threw a huge fit about Netflix’s plans to split its DVD service into a separate site Qwikster, and recognizing this user feedback, CEO Reed Hastings had this to say Monday:

“It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.”

The series of embarrassing blunders by Netflix has brought their once incredibly valuable stock plummeting following price hikes, apologies, and now this backpedaling.

While it’s nice to see a company actually listen to its customers for once, it might prove to be too little too late for Netflix, whose shares have dropped by almost two-thirds and counting since July.

Facebook App Finally Available On iPad

What? Really? I don’t own an iPad, but in the imaginary dimension in which I do have one, I am shocked this has taken so long to happen. Better late than never I guess.

Twitter Secures Trademark “Tweet”

Twitter has settled the ongoing lawsuit with Twittad, a company providing sponsored advertising on Twitter. Twittad trademarked its tagline, “Let your ad meet tweets,” plus variations on the word “tweet”.

Obviously Twitter was none too happy about this, and has been working to get ownership of the “tweet” lingo. The two have finally made amends, with Twittad transferring the “tweet” trademark to Twitter, although Twittad is allowed to continue to use its current trademark.